Not Having Sex For A Year And 5 Other Pledges That Will Not Help Your Relationship

“Would a pact not to have sex with each other for a year make their hearts grow fonder?” I read incredulously from the New York Times Twitter feed.

“No!” shouted my husband from the other room.

A yearlong vow of abstinence sounds like a crazy effort for someone not actively trying to write a book about that time she didn’t have sex for a year, but the subject of this week’s Modern Love column attempted just that. She and her boyfriend were so deeply in lust with each other that they struck up a yearlong pact to not have sex with each other to see if it would make them even crazier about each other.

We were so certain of our strong connection that we could risk abstinence. We told ourselves we wanted to see how much the experiment would make us long for each other.

So, yeah. It was a crazy experiment with a romantic premise. But it’s not the worst thing a person could do though. Here are five pledges equally unlikely to help your relationship: